do I want to tell mother how bad you are; but I'll do it
sooner than let you swindle Don Gordon or anybody else. Why don't you
go to work?"

"Kase I've got jest as much right to set around an' do nothin' as
other folks has," answered Dan, who had had time to recover himself
in some measure. "That's jest why!"

"Mother and I don't sit around and do nothing."

"No, but them Gordons does."

"No, they don't. They all work, Don and Bert as well as the rest."

"If I hadn't seed them ridin' round so much on them circus hosses an'
sailin' in them painted boats of their'n, mebbe I'd be willin' to
b'lieve that," said Dan. "They don't work, nuther. They don't do
nothin', but have good times. They've got good clothes an' nice
things, an' I've got jest as much right to 'em as they have."

"Those ideas will get you into trouble some day," replied David,
earnestly. "If you want nice things go to work and earn them; that's
the way to get them."

While this conversation was going on, David was pulling off his wet
clothes and putting on his best suit, the one he wore on Sundays. It
was not just such a suit as the most of us would like to go to church
in, but it was whole and neat, and David looked like another boy in
it. He kept the pointer in the house with him all the while, for fear
that his brother might attempt to steal him again; but Dan was too
much astonished at the turn affairs were taking, and too badly
frightened, to make any more efforts to win the ten dollars reward.
He sat on the bench, with his eyes fastened thoughtfully on the
ground, and saw David come out with the pointer and lead him down the
road toward General Gordon's, without saying a word.

When David reached the barn he walked straight through it to the
shop, and there he found Don and Bert, busy at work building more
traps. They were surprised to see him dressed in his best, and still
more surprised, and delighted too, when the pointer bounded in and
fawned upon them.

"Father said that the offer of a reward would bring him if anything
would," exclaimed Don, as he wound his arms around the animal's neck
and hugged him as he might have hugged a brother he had not seen for
a long time.

"Yes, the reward did it," replied David, and that was true. If Dan
had not seen the notice in the post-office, he never would have had
that conversation with David, and consequently the latter would not
have known where to go to find the pointer.

"We all thought he